17 October 2013 5:51 PM

Free Riders and Heresy Hunters

I am asked in what way atheists are free riders in Christian societies. In this way: They expect the benefits of such societies, general honesty in all dealings, self-restraint, sobriety and gentleness in public and private conduct, diligence in work, marital fidelity and parental responsibility, the tender care of the old (these are examples) to persist after the morality which prescribed them has been dismantled.

Practical atheism, as I term it, is common in those blasted regions of our cities where nobody is married, there are no fathers, the remaining shops have steel shutters, the schools are places of dread for anyone who values learning or order, the police only visit to flash their lights for a few minutes before departing (and anyone who calls them is a ‘grass’), the ground-floor windows have bars, and the vandalised phone-boxes are smeared with spittle and littered used needles.

It’s also common among many bankers and other businessmen, who get away with what they can; among young people who procure abortions because babies are inconvenient to them, and older people who dissolve marriages because they are inconvenient, who drink to excess, take drugs and allow their children to do so.

These habits of mind then spread into the trades and professions where selfishness can cost more than a little self-esteem – the banker who risks his depositor’s money, the police officer who lies in court, or who fails to act when a case like that of Fiona Pilkington comes before him, the lawyer who fails to protect his clients’ interests with sufficient diligence and attention, the surgeon (or the school bus driver, or the train driver, or the lorry driver) who has cannabis in his bloodstream while he operates, the journalist who prefers to hack a phone than to do the hard grind of proper reporting.

We begin to see this around us. The test is always what people do when they think nobody is looking. Civilisation doesn’t suddenly collapse, any more than our northern Sun suddenly sets. I suspect militant practical atheism is quite common in the aborting classes, the divorcing classes, the cohabiting classes, the banking classes and the drug-taking classes. Those who spread this idea aren’t as popular as they are in the bookshops for no reason at all.

They don’t mind doing these things. But as their comfortable world frays at the edges, and they find they can’t rely on the interior goodness and trustworthiness of others, they will (I suspect) angrily complain that things seem to have gone downhill a bit. They should realise that this is because they have helped push them downhill. If you don’t yourself accept that you must be guided in your actions by a just, unchanging authority which knows your secret heart, you can’t expect others to do this either. I am sure that one of the reasons for atheist coyness about their (undoubted) motives is an intelligent fear that their idea might catch on more widely. What if the servants turned atheist? Atheism’s only any fun when it’s the creed of a safe and smug minority, surrounded, served and protected by believers.

I don’t, by the way, recall Mr Wooderson asking me the question about the bereaved or tragedy-stricken that he says he put to me. Had he done so, I should have said that bereaved people are entitled to think what they like, as we all are, and it’s obvious that it’s always hard for those who have faced cruel loss to believe in a benevolent God. But I know of no examples of the modern aggressive, intolerant atheists who have come to their conclusions by this route. The militant intolerant atheists are a different thing altogether from the quiet despairing people who feel abandoned by goodness.

Our resident Heresy Hunter contributes ‘Mr Hitchens's position on homosexuality isn't as clear as he would have us believe. He says that homosexual acts between consenting adults should be permitted in private, although he also says that gay people who ask to be accepted as normal damage marriage,’

Heresy Hunter :’so presumably he wants gay people to hide who they really are.’

***Why does the Heresy Hunter presume this thing? He may be able to get away with this sort of twisted insinuation in the darkened, flickering cellars of his inquisitional trade, but not in the light of day. Can he explain his logic? I have never said, and do not think anything of the kind. I believe in freedom of speech, and leaving people to make their own moral decisions this side of crime. I don’t believe homosexual acts should be crimes. I do think, and have in the past said, that public declarations of homosexuality are incompatible with a conservative moral position, as is encouragement of divorce, advocacy of , or calls for legalisation of illegal drugtaking, advocacy of cohabitation and the deliberate encouragement of fatherless families. That obviously means that I don't think someone can say these things and claim to be a moral and social conservative. But I can’t stop anyone making them, and wouldn’t want to if I could.

The Heresy Hunter continues : ‘What I am trying to ascertain is a) exactly how announcing that you are gay stops straight couples from marrying and having children’

**Me, too. How does it? I haven’t said it does, and don’t think it does. All sexual acts outside lifelong marriage are in my view immoral and damage marriage in one way or another, but that’s an awful lot of acts, and the homosexual ones form a minor, nay, tiny part of them. Divorce, cohabitation and the deliberate subsidy of fatherless families are the issue.

Heresy Hunter again: ‘b) to what extent does Mr Hitchens think gay people should pretend that they don't exist’

***To no extent.

Heresy Hunter again: ‘and c) how far Mr Hitchens would like this idea to be reflected in the law’.

*** As I don’t espouse the idea, I have no desire to see it reflected in the law, by definition. Even if I did, it doesn’t seem to me to be a matter for the law.

The Heresy Hunter again: ‘ (which is why I am asking him about Russia, for they have just enacted a law that is similar - in principle at least, but obviously much worse in scale - to that of Section 28, which Mr Hitchens didn't believe to be a bad thing). ‘

**Well, if it’s not the same as Section 28, then it can’t be compared with it. If it *is* the same, I suppose I can’t consistently object to it in someone else’s country, though Section 28 is deader than the deadest doornail - and other people’s countries, as I keep saying, are none of my business anyway. I think the teaching of post-Christian sexual morality is not the proper business of state schools in a society founded on Christian morality.

The Heresy Hunter again: ‘Does Mr Hitchens believe that speaking about homosexuality as though it is normal in front of children or teenagers would reduce the amount of gay people? ‘

*** I shouldn’t have thought there could be such a crude cause and effect, as life is seldom so simple. But Matthew Parris, who knows far more about this than I do, has written interestingly on influence and homosexuality (the Times, 6th August 2006). I wish I could reproduce the whole thing but it’s behind a paywall) He concludes ‘Sexuality is a supple as well as subtle thing and can sometimes be influenced, even promoted ; I think that in some people some drives can be discouraged and others encouraged; I think some people can choose. I wish I were conscious of being able to. I would choose to be gay.’ Perhaps he should pester Mr Parris on the subject.

The Heresy Hunter continues ‘Would he like to see such a policy introduced in this country?’

**I have no interest in this subject any more. I also have no illusions that anything I say or do will influence any policy, so I might as well propose to alter the courses of the planets as urge the adoption of policies. At one time, I imagined that the 1967 Abse compromise was a line worth defending. I now think I was wasting my time with a futile, trivial diversion.

And the Heresy Hunter concludes: ‘And when is he going to answer my charge that he is worse than a bigot, because a bigot's disapproval of gay people is irrational, whereas he deliberately chose to believe that gay people are abnormal and immoral, and to treat them as such, when he chose to live in world with meaning?’

***The depth of misunderstanding here is so vast that I doubt I can bridge it, since it is wilful rather than rational. The Christian is commanded to love his fellow men and women, even tiresome, prejudiced Heresy Hunters. He condemns wrong *actions*, starting with his own, and seeks to ensure that society does not encourage wrong actions in others. The statement that such and such a type of person is ‘abnormal and immoral’ is not compatible with this view, as all fall short and all can also be forgiven. Also, I’m not sure where he has got the word ‘abnormal’. I should have thought anyone with much experience of life would know that ‘normality’ is a bit of an illusion. Nor is it always desirable. As for ‘treating them as such’, what on earth does he mean by this? What is this ‘treatment’ that he imagines? It’s tedious to ask, because I know I shall get a response, but am by no means sure of getting an answer. People such as this Heresy Hunter do not seek or welcome generous rational discussion, though they purport to be innocent inquirers. That said, if he surprises me with reason and generosity, I’ll reply. But if he acts according to his usual behaviour, I shall not.

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There is no such thing as practical atheism as Peter Hitchens states. Atheism is a philosophical position on the non existence of God and nothing else. That some non believers may be involved in activity pertaining to their non belief is therefore entirely superfluous

I wonder what Peter Hitchens thinks of the raison d etre of the Church of England in regard to his personal view on divorce ? Because if it was not for the legalisation of it it would never have come into existence. It does seem odd therefore that he chooses to be a member of that same institution. Now of course he cannot be held responsible for the ulterior motive of an ancient English monarch. But did it not bother him when he decided to become a member of how such an institution came to be ? It does tend to weaken any argument he makes when referencing so called Christian morality and especially where the subject matter is divorce

I say so called because there is actually no such thing as Christian morality. There is just morality. Putting a superfluous noun in front of it does not make it any more so. Of course what is and is not moral is notoriously subjective but those who have a belief system are not automatically more moral than those who do not. I personally use the Golden Rule myself. It is as good as any can be on the subject of morality given that it is not something capable of falsification. It was once suggested by Christopher Hitchens that it was not a good foundation as a moral code because of ulterior motive. But obviously ulterior motive would not apply as it is only intended where there is positive intent. It was also famously alluded to in the Sermon On The Mount though one does not have to be a Christian to practice it. Actually Jesus went further because he advocated putting others above yourself rather than just equal to them but even so. It may be hard to put what he was referencing into practice but what is important here is the spirit of what he was saying as much as anything else. Because if one thinks of treating everyone as they would wish to be treated themselves then that gets translated into action too. But even if it were only practised by Christians it would be just morality and nothing else

We are naturally good and bad, good being associated with altruism and bad associated with selfishness. The proportions vary normally over the whole population with some people beyond the standard deviation being extremely 'good' and others being extremely 'bad'.

Your next two paragraphs support this idea and develop it, so I don't know why you have a problem with what I say. It is that a rudimentary natural morality is evolutionary in nature. The world population doubles every few years, so the appearance of natural morality was clearly in Nature's blind interest, which is the survival of the human gene pool.

"About 'Render unto Caesar' etc, you appear to be saying that the story of Jesus, whose example we are enjoined to emulate did not involve standing up to authority."

Jesus specifically endorsed Ceasar's authority within the worldly hegemony of Ceasar and God's within the heavenly hegemony of God's. Ceasar's 'kingdom' was of this world while God's was not. Nowhere in the New Testament do I find Jesus "standing up" to the Roman Empire. On the contrary, Jesus acquiesced before Roman authority. His "standing up to" was to those who flouted God's law and not to those who flouted Ceasar's. Indeed, the two robbers at the Crucifixion conceded their own deserving to die while expressing surprise that Jesus had joined them.

By all accounts Jesus was stitched-up by the Pharisees for their own reasons, probably in part a suck-up to the Romans in gratuitously surrendering a thorn in the tenuous entente cordiale between themselves and the Romans, and partly to rid themselves of a popular rival. In all these intrigues I can find no angst on the part of Jesus in respect of the Romans.

You are saying that we are naturally good. and that we are increasingly so with 'Progress. For those with eyes to see, this liberal / left myth was dispelled by the events of the 20th Century alone, never mind the ethics of Genghis Khan, which I mention.

Sure, human beings have altruistic impulses. But these vary from non existent in psychopathic personalities ( There are plenty of these at the top of large organisations) to Mother Theresa . They are rather weak on average and easily trumped for many by others such as anger, greed, selfishness, contempt, jealousy, cruelty, fear etc. Some or all of these are incorprated in political ideologies. Especially though there is genetic interest.

In most people they decline sharply the further one goes from blood kinship. Thus we are very altruistic when it comes to our own chidren and family but not as much even for the people next door and relatively little for those who are ethnically distant, especially if they are geographicaly distant as well. Racial,,cultural and religious distance is the point of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

About 'Render unto Caesar' etc, you appear to be saying that the story of Jesus, whose example we are enjoined to emulate did not involve standing up to authority..That his appearance before Pilate and the Chief Priest and his subsequen execution by crucifixion was not as the consequence of his opposition to worldly powers.

What a novel interpretation you make of Christ's story and his teachings.

"The Christian spirit is one of summoning internal strength with the help of the almighty to resist oppression."

Then why do we 'give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's'? Why will the poor in spirit have no problem entering the Kingdom of Heaven? Why are the meek likewise blessed, as are the peacemakers? This doesn't sound much like an oppression-resisting prospectus to me.

"One can be moral even if one is an atheist. But what is ones morality?
Atheists swan along in western lands imagining that the dying remnants of Christianity that they live by is somehow natural and universal . But as the above shows, It isn't."

Altruism, that quality of the human condition underpinning modern theories of morality, was introduced into the gene pool with the evolution of homo sapiens, roughly 200,000 years before Christianity. This was before the species had migrated out of Africa. Had altruism not entered the gene pool at that time we would likely not be having this discussion.

Altruism, and its corollary natural conscience, drove the need to 'fine-tune' wildly varying primitive behaviours as homo sapiens, modern humans, became more and more civilized and desirous of viable, agreeable societies for all. Thus developed the moral philosophies of the ancients and subsequently the mainstream religions with which we are familiar today.

Moralising religion is a late-comer in the field of 'fine-tuning' rudimentary altruism to the point that human society became viable and sustainable. At best religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is a borrowing from primitive traditions long established as 'the way forward', as would be said today, for agreeably workable society.

It is interesting to note that the increase in the world's population continues apace and practically exponentially. This in spite of there being relatively few good-hearted Christians. If the non-Christian world had been, or is, full of Genghis Khans and Stalins, Christians would long since have become the overwhelmingly dominant majority, if not the only population. The rest would have slaughtered one another off centuries ago. Thus as far as Nature is concerned something about the human condition in the non-Christian world must be right.

Nietzsche nailed it long ago about those who in post -Christianity who imagine that Christian morality, in even attenuated or perverted form, is somehow natural to us. l

He wrote:

‘They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling on to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not hold it against little moralist females a la Eliot. In England, one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation for theology by showing in a veritable awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.

.We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christ of faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality from under one’s feet….…..it is truth only if God is the truth –it stands and falls with faith in God.’

Nietzsche foresaw that in the next century - the twentieth- as a result of the decline in the grip of Christianity, there would be ' wars such as have never been seen.'

He also foresaw that there would be an attempt to invent a new morality, but this too would fail. That attempt is surely Political Correctness, which is actually a perversion of Christianity, as its progenitor, Marxism..

What would occur after the demise of PC, or rather its total lack of grip on all but a tiny although certainly powerful minority in the first place? Well, we are seeing that in the shamelessness of brazen, fiddling honour-free politicians right down to the dead souls of the underclass estates. as Peter Hitchens has pointed out.

@ Philuip Leung.
'The admirable attributes of the ideal society that Mr Hitchens outlines at the start of his article are readily found in Japan and South Korea, which are modelled on Confucian principles.'
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No they aren't. Confucian values are at odds with Christian values..
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For example, while one of the ten commandments says, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness', Confucius said that a son must lie for his father. In the Confucian world, a person must lie for, but not to, his superior. At the same time it is no sin for a superior to lie to his inferiors.
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Clearly in such a society, nothing anyone says can be taken at face value, unless it is from an inferior to a superior. It is a society ruled by lack of trust and obeisance to ' en men', superiors to whom one owes obligations of loyalty. Mao Tse-Tung is a classic case in point.
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The Christian spirit is one of summoning internal strength with the help of the almighty to resist oppression, because in Christianity there are no inferiors or superiors. All are equally children of God. That is diametrically opposed to the Confucian spirit which is to submit to the oppression and to love the oppressor.
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It s also opposed to the spirit of Islam. There, muslim scholars teach that Muslims should generally be truthful to each other, unless the purpose of lying is to "smooth over differences."
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There are two forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, taqiyya and kitman. These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause Islam - in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.
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One can be moral even if one is an atheist. But what is ones morality?
Atheists swan along in western lands imagining that the dying remnants of Christianity that they live by is somehow natural and universal . But as the above shows, It isn't.
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Incidentally , if one wants to know what a society can be like that has no real religious dimension, Japan is a good example. Westerners think that Buddhism or Shintoism is important, but Confucianism has had more impact than either combined.

Japan's Confucianism incorporates 'En' , but lacks the Chinese Confucian obligation for 'Ren', mercy. The result are pretty obvious in Japanese behaviour and attitudes throughout their history.
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Or, Conn Iggulden's 'Conqueror ' series is to be recommended as a picture of a essentially godless people. (The Mongols did have a distant Sky God who was uninterested in the doings of people)).
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Iggulden's tale of the Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors taught me most of what I know about this immensely influential people. I believe he actually lived among them for a period to learn their ways.
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Genghis Khan's Mongols had bonds of family and tribal loyalty and pride in herding and warlike virtues, They admired a strong tribal leader who was capable of ruing a fractious people.. Beyond that, they had little of what we might call morality, including empathy for anyone or anything except their own. They were pitiless.
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Genghis Khan summed up his own new 'values' thus;
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'The real greatest pleasure of men is to repress rebels and defeat enemies, to exterminate them and grab everything they have; to see their married women crying, to ride on their steeds with smooth backs, to treat their beautiful queens and concubines as pajamas and pillows, to stare and kiss their rose-colored faces and to suck their sweet nipple -coloured lips.'

And there are people who think that they would be better off without Christan morality!

C. E. M. Joad was a fascinating character. Resented as a plagiarist by serious professional philosophers (notably Bertrand Russell, who declined to review a Joad book with the remark, "Modesty forbids), he was nevertheless a successful populariser of philosophy, and his books are immensely readable and entertaining, if not necessarily impregnably sound. An honourable exception to this characterisation, however, is his Guide to the Philosophy of Morals and Politics, which receives a respectful citation in Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies.

A crankish vitalist of the Bergson-by-way-of-Shaw school, he returned to Christianity towards the end of his shortish life (Russell again: "He has lost his railway ticket and found God"). This is recorded in his final book, The Recovery of Belief, which acknowledges C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain as a crucial influence.

I have often toyed with the idea of compiling and publishing a short, rehabilitatory essay, provisionally entitled The Recovery of Joad; in the meantime, put him on your reading list.

@Philip Leung
It's an interesting point - Japanese society indeed has praiseworthy features (though its reluctance to accept refugees and thereby show a wider responsibility for humanity is perhaps not one of them). But the Japanese (as the Nazis did with Christianity) needed to desconstruct their sophisticated religion (Shintoism) and replace it with some neo-paganism in order to carry out their less scrupulous in WWII.

John Aspinall also makes a very fair point, and puts it kindly. And yet it's still true (and I realise that this is not the point Mr Aspinall was making, it's just my addendum) that a believer can 'realise' that there is a God in the same way that an atheist can 'realise' that there isn't one.

Contributor Peter writes,
“Does he really think that “general honesty in all dealings, self-restraint, sobriety and gentleness in public and private conduct, diligence in work, marital fidelity and parental responsibility, the tender care of the old” developed only in Christian societies? A visit to, for example, Japan will easily disabuse him of this nonsense.”

A while ago I wrote here about the influence of western Christian countries on Japan when the land reopened to the other countries in 1868 after more than 200 years’ isolation policy. Japan was then for instance almost forced to change the law on marriage to “monogamy”; before that men could openly have mistresses beside their wives while wives who committed adultery were heavily punished by law.

Many Christian missionaries worked hard to establish schools and collages for women in Japan - they also build hospitals and nursing homes and orphanages. Although Japan has never been a Christian country (it is actually one of the most difficult countries in the world to evangelize), one cannot deny that she has learnt a lot and got tremendous benefit from Christian civilizations and Christians. I can say, as a Japanese, we have been genuine “free-riders” so far.

I would also like to add that cruel bullying among children and youth, high suicides rate, destruction of marriage and family, teenage prostitutes, lonesome deaths of poor old people and crisis in school are, among other serious problems, actual issues in Godless Japan.

So please don’t easily describe Japan as ”the Land of Gold” as Marco Polo once did. (He had never been to Japan.)

T. S. Eliot wrote (in this excerpt from a broadcast talk he made to Germany in 1946):

“....I am talking about the common tradition of Christianity which has made Europe what it is....It is in Christianity that our arts have developed;....that the laws of Europe have – until recently – been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all our thought has significance......I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith…..If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism….

To our Christian heritage we owe many things besides our religious faith. Through it we trace the evolution of our arts, through it we have our conception of Roman Law which has done so much to shape the Western World, through it we have our conceptions of private and public morality. And through it we have our common standards of literature…..The Western world has its unity in this heritage, in Christianity and the ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome and Israel, from which, owing to two thousand years of Christianity, we trace our descent…..No political and economic organisation…..can supply what this cultural unity gives…..In a world which has seen such material devastation as ours, these spiritual possessions are also in imminent peril.”

Thanks for your reply. I was attempting to analyse the quoted sentences from your piece in ways that don't imply that the same group of atheists are both militant, and coy about their beliefs-- with rather convoluted results.

What I can't fathom about the "New Atheists" is that if one feels compelled to make a choice and one alternative is, by definition, good, why on earth choose the other? I can understand wilfulness in children or adolescents as a kind of exuberance, but when adults won't admit the plain fact that they've made a choice, I suspect sophistry. Perhaps it's that to do so would be to concede free will, or perhaps it's something more nihilistic.
As I said on a previous thread, pity the poor angry atheist.

I reread a book by Hillair Belloc recently, The Great Heresies. In the section devoted to modernism he commented a return to a non-christian society would result primarily in an increase in general cruelty. I can't help but think he was right when I contemplate widespread abortion, the support for euthanasia, and the general toleration around obvious evils like family breakdown and drug abuse.

Peter, in your earlier article on selfism, the most telling paragraph to me was:

"So the abortionist campaigns as a feminist; the drug liberaliser campaigns as the friend of civil liberties; the adulterer campaigns as the rescuer of the woman trapped in an unhappy marriage; and so on"

People lie to each other and to themselves these days and adopt roles to deny their selfish disregard for others..

I would also recommend a book by Ben Wiker on what he calls Moral Dawinism. In this he discusses Epicurianism, which was the birth of atheism. One point he suggests, extrapolating from the writings of Epicurus is that not believing in Gods will result in a more comfortable life, and will relieve the atheist(Epicurian) of worry about what follows death, etc.

What is not appreciated generally though is that not believing in God to relieve ourselves of worry can extend to every aspect of our thought and lives. We simply begin lying to ourselves and inventing stories of our own, the end being comfort of mind. This is the modernist disease, every man invents stories to ease their mind. We have become fantasists absolving ourselves of sins.

Paradoxically it is rational for the atheist to lie to themselves and invent stories to relieve their guilt or justify their selfishness, because easing such worries is the primary reason for being an atheist to begin with. Atheism leads not to truth or rationalism but self serving fantasies, fantasies which more often than not obscure our own selfish greed and lust.

Of course a nation of fantasists will make appalling decisions as they interact with real life, and that is why we have so much turmoil in the west, and why most likely we will again have another horrendous conflict in the future, as the world sickens at our decadence, fake piety and lies.

You do not believe that atheists can be moral? Really? This is such a pompous, self-righteous and arrogant proposition that, when I first read it, I was quite angry. However, on reflection, it is clearly the opinion of someone so lacking in the ability to think and reason, that it must be considered merely risible.

I would suggest that the morality of non-believers can be considered superior to that of believers. After all, a Christian, for example, is taught that, if he follows the teachings of Christ in this world, his reward will be great in the next, so that he lives his life on the basis of (sometimes enlightened) self-interest.

The moral non-believer, on the other hand, does what he believes to be right purely because he thinks it is proper, with no hope or expectation of reward in the hereafter.

Self-interest is at work in the actions of the believer; not, as Peter Hitchens suggests, in a previous blog, in those of the person who follows the Golden Rule.

I've always been agnostic, and, on reflection, I do feel like a bit of a free-rider. I want to continue enjoying the benefits of a society based on Christianity, but I have done very little to support Christianity as a power in Britain.

@James
Historically, societies have frequently seen fit to enslave others. In Britain it was largely the committed Christians who campaigned for abolition, not the pursuers of mammon (who where very content with the status quo). Are you currently wearing trainers? Maybe they were made by children in a sweatshop somewhere.

John Vernau asks an interesting question. (first quoting me) ‘"I suspect militant practical atheism is quite common in...[various degenerate classes] ...Those who spread this idea aren’t as popular as they are in the bookshops for no reason at all." "I am sure that one of the reasons for atheist coyness about their (undoubted) motives is an intelligent fear that their idea might catch on more widely."--PH Hmm. Are there two kinds of atheists, one militant, practical and spreaders of the idea, who have 'converted' the other kind; the dog-in-the-manger types now coy about their motives? Or are the 'militant practical' atheists, fighting to 'convert' only limited numbers (sufficient for banking, cohabitation etc) a different beast altogether from 'those who spread this idea', these spreaders (perhaps not even atheists!) secretly subverting the coy militants by over-popularising their idea? Or is there just the one group; militant and possibly practical atheists who, wanting to 'convert' believers, spread the atheist idea? Their books are popular. But they are coy about their motives, for fear of being too successful. They try, but not too hard. Their fears might be intelligent but their missionary zeal, not so much. I have to admit I'm confused. Perhaps I've been reading too many postings by mononymic contributors and I've addled my brain. ...Cup of tea ... lie down...’

Are there two kinds of atheist. Well, in a way. The ‘Practical Atheists’ of whom I so often write, who range the blasted housing estates, probably couldn’t pronounce or spell the word, and if asked would say they believed in nothing. But they are the consequence of the collapse of Christian belief among the British masses during the last century.

The ‘New Atheists’, most of whom are prosperous academics or men of letters, living far from these blasted regions and often in some luxury, do not at present connect their beliefs with such people. There was an incident during the so-called ‘riots’ of 2011 when an expensive West London restaurant was invaded by Practical Atheists, who were eventually driven off by the kitchen staff. This may be one of the few recorded instances of the two sorts of Atheist actually meeting (I am presuming that there were such people among the diners at this fine establishment. There usually are in such places, and it is not that far from ther BBC). They probably did not recognise each other as co-religionists, but they are.

If the beliefs of the ‘rioters’, about property, manners, propriety, violence and honesty spread into the functioning core of British middle-class life – so that the walk home from the station was never safe, the trains crashed frequently because the track maintenance workers and the drivers were drug abusers, medical prescriptions often failed disastrously because the manufacturers had watered down the dose or sold time-expired goods to the NHS, food wasn’t safe to eat because those who handled and stored it couldn’t be trusted to stay clean, refrigerators were turned down low to save money and the meat went off, the servants could not be trusted not to steal or to allow thieves or kidnappers into the house, the only way to get good schooling or good medical treatment (or any assistance from the police) was to pay bribes, the surgeons in the hospital were reliably drunk or high on drugs, the taxi drivers quite likely to rape or rob their clients, the sewage came gurgling back up the lavatory, and tapwater wasn’t safe to drink because competence and duty had died out in the ranks of the sewerage workers, the banks and pension funds collapsed and lost all their money because their employees were corrupt and dishonest, letters never arrived because the postmen stole the valuable ones and dumped the others – well, in that case I can imagine these Godless professors and philosophers harrumphing away on the leader page of the ‘Daily Mail’. demanding ‘crackdowns ‘ and who knows what else, to put things right. Of course, they wouldn’t put things right. Crackdowns, by their nature, never do. That’s what the Third World is like. It’s the heritage and afterglow of centuries of Christianity, and in our case rigorous Protestant Christianity, which guarantees that our lives are still, for a while yet, daily miracles of order, safety and efficiency.

I really don’t think the ‘New Atheists’ want that collapse into the Third World to happen anywhere near them. Who would? They’re happy for their abstract ideas to spread among the sort of people they know and like, people whose activities have very little impact on whether anything works or not. And for some years almost any book attacking God has had the certainty of a good and lucrative sale (though I think this is now tailing off). They know in their hearts what these abstractions actually mean in life. They know (as do we all) how to appear virtuous in public so that you can expect the same in return. But they dislike spelling it out, and one reason for that must surely be that they grasp – and fear - what will happen if their own beliefs become universal.

As for being afraid of being found out, all moral systems require detrrent punishments for those whose consciences fail. The difference between the authority of God and all others is that the moral person consciously and deliberately chooses to accept that authority, knowing that if he wants the protection of justice, he must accept that the same justice applies to him.

It would be a pretty immoral person who imagined himself so perfect that he needed no measure of fear to keep him from doing wrong.

As for what *would* do if I believed there was no God, I do not know. But it is quite enough to recall what I *did* do when I believed this.

In an earlier posting, Mr Hitchens referred to atheism as a "blatant charter for selfishness, deviousness, crime and deceit." In the same article, he said that atheism is entitled to conditional respect. How can such a belief be worthy of (conditional) respect?

Also isn't there something self-evidently false about saying that 'tender care for the old' happens because of religious 'prescription'? The desire to care for the vulnerable -- whether god-given or whatever -- is something that atheists and theists alike know has existed within them for as long as they can remember. Who hasn't nursed a bird back to health as an infant (that is, atheist or thereabout)? Whatever it is, it's not religious prescription in the sense of teaching or instruction, nor even inspiration derived therefrom. Hitchens seems to be doing the very hackneyed lazy thing of binding all the best things in the world to his favourite religion and then claiming we're all doomed if actual religious devotion ceases.

I don't believe Dickie Dawkins's could ever be considered thoughtful in his furrays in the sphere of religion and philosophy. As David Bentley Hart succinctly and accurately puts it:

"Frankly, going solely on the record of his published work, it would be rash to assume that Dawkins has ever learned how to reason his way to the end of a simple syllogism."

I would recommend Hart's article Believe It or Not and his book Atheist Delusions as a sort of summing up of the New Atheist movement. I think he is also quite accurate in his appraisal of Christopher Hitchens - his arguments against religion are mostly enthymemes, or syllogisms with a premise missing. Unfortunately, it is almost always the major premise.

Aside from the strange fact you seem to watch programs with Stephen Fry in them (accept, perhaps, Blackadder), I do wonder where this statistic came from about homosexual suicide attempts in Russia? Surely the Russian government doesn't collect them? If not, then who else has come up with this statistic and how trustworthy is it?

"They expect the benefits of such societies, general honesty in all dealings, self-restraint, sobriety and gentleness in public and private conduct, diligence in work, marital fidelity and parental responsibility, the tender care of the old (these are examples) to persist after the morality which prescribed them has been dismantled."

So? As long as atheists take the intermediary step of actually desiring these things, what's the problem?

Mr Wooderson writes to ask if I accept that 'not all atheists are motivated in their unbelief by a selfish desire to be free from moral accountability, and that in fact some are led to their position by a sincere conviction that the claims of theism are false?

I'm not sure. They'll almost never tell us (Maugham being a rare exception), and I have no way of making them. Since I was for many years an atheist myself, I can of course consult my own experience, recalling that *at the time* I would not have been willing to admit the truth, and would have angrily resented anyone pointing it out. This makes me smile indulgently at the angry, resentful denials I get from current atheists.

It seems to me to be the only possible explanation of what is otherwise inexplicable. I know why *I* go beyond agnosticism to theist belief. I know I don't have to. Therefore I must want to, and it is quite easy to explain why I want to. The same must surely apply to them. They don't want what I want. They want it not to be so. But it's not going to make people love you, when you say you hate the thought that the universe might actually be just. So let's go on about circumcision, or Mormons, or greedy televangelists, or fundamentalists.

I'm not sure that a person who has lost his or her faith as a result of a tragedy can be described as an 'atheist'. Do such people go about proclaiming that they 'know' there is no God, and sneering at people who think there is one? Do they welcome the loss of faith? Or hope to regain it? I know of no studies, but see this as an attempt to confuse two different types of person.

He says ' After all, there are many of us who – while perhaps not 'quiet and despairing' – are neither militant nor intolerant, and have no wish to see Christian morality 'dismantled'.'

Are there? I don't understand how anyone can arrive at a *conviction* that there is no God without desiring this to be the case. If they desire that, then they *must* be intolrnatof Christianity. Nothing in life or knowledge compels such a view, any more than it compels theism. Why are they not content to be agnostics, if their view is not determined by desire?

It is quite comical watching these people pretend that they are not motivated by desire, so as to avoid examining their own motives. Why would that be?

I should state here, in answer to an earlier comment from someone else, that (as I have many times said before) this point goes both ways, and that *of course* my theism is motivated by desire, most of all a desire that Justice should exist in the Universe, which is of course dependent on the idea (also a very strong desire of mine) that death is not the end of life

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